Dear CC,
Hello my little pumpkin! Oh how I love you. You seriously light up my life, and I am so so so happy to have you as my daughter. Abba and the boys and A are also so happy to have you in our family. We are so lucky. Thank you for bring us so much joy.
Communication: Chaya, at 7 months old you understand your name when called (most of the time). You love to act shy when talking to new people, and play a funny shy face game with us where you busy your head into your chest. It is adorable.
Eating: At 6 months it was 1 packet of food, now that you’re 7 months old we’re up to 2 packets + BLW a day. You love apple, sweet potato, pumpkin, cucumber slices, rice crackers, and, well, pretty much anything!
As far as milk goes, it’s mostly breastmilk these days, with hardly any formula. Even if I do need to give you a bottle I have enough of a stash that I it can mostly be breastmilk and only a little formula. The formula you have is still the allergy one.
We did have a situation a few weeks ago, where you were quite constipated and really restless and just… not happy in the day. It finally clicked to me that even though you had plenty of wet nappies, that you were possibly being under fed, milk wise. You see, this month you’ve been making good headway with the supply line – we’ve had the air tube completely cut off for all your feeds, so that you were sucking more from the breast, and less from the tube. I realised that in doing this you were getting tired easier, and falling asleep at the breast, and therefore not finishing the feed. Because breastfeeding has been super unenjoyable for me this month I just sort of let that be the end of the feed, thinking you had sucked quite a lot from the breast, and that why there was milk left in the bottle.
BUT it finally clicked that probably all these things were meaning (duh – seems obvious in hindsight, and when I spell it out like this!) that you were being under-fed! So I supplemented you a lot with bottles (for a week it was two extra bottles a day), until the last few days, when you’ve really gained the strength you need in your cheeks (such beautiful full cheeks these days!) to feed well. As of now we’re still supplementing with 1 bottle each evening before bed.
Despite all this I’m making really good headway with my milk supply, and have a bit of a stash in the fridge now! I’m off the medication I was taking to increase my supply, and I feel so much better.
Chiro: We had a good report from Jemima the chiro this month, and she said we didn’t need to come back for another month which is great!
Crawling/Moving: You are getting great at the army crawl. None of the other kids did this, and I suspect it’s part of having the low muscle tone. I’ve been encouraging you to crawl properly by holding up your stomach, so that you get used to having the pressure on your arms. The chiro also recommended an exercise we could do to help with strength in this area. With crawling comes the separation anxiety! You’ve been quite the mummy’s girl this month.
Games etc.: Chaya, you love to play the “ah wah wa” game with Daddy when he taps your mouth. You also play peek a boo either on her own (with someone watching) or with others who do the up and down of the scarf. Today we play round and round the garden, and itsy bitsy spider.
Sleep: Your sleep has been mostly good, at least once I worked out the food issue. You still have off days, but mostly a great sleeper. Some night you don’t really wake at all (maybe once), and other nights you wake a terrible lot, but none of us really “wake up” because we just put the dummy back in and continue on. I definitely wish you didn’t need the dummy, because I know it’s not good for you from a breastfeeding perspective or a reliance perspective, but it’s keeping me sane when the feeding issues are pulling me in the other direction.
You are mostly good in the car now on long trips, though if we don’t time it well you can be a bit upset. This month Nana mimi died.
COVD restrictions have eased, and all the big kids are back at school/kindy. It’s just you and me again 3 days a week, and we like this time together. 🙂
Love you my little CC sugar puff. You have beautiful big cheeks now (lots of work from both of us to get them that big!!), and a smile to match! You are just darling.
Love you to the moon and back,
Mama